We were lucky to catch up with Justin Pillmore recently and have shared our conversation below.

Justin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

How it all Started:
Back in 2018, my 2 year-old son and I were sitting on the couch and I asked him if he wanted to dress up like a golf caddie for Halloween. He could care less about the idea but I was super excited so that’s where our internet searching began. After several hours of looking on ebay, amazon, and etsy, it was clear that there was nothing out there online that resembled a white kids coverall.

My search continued for several weeks and I quickly concluded that if I wanted a caddie uniform for my son, I needed to create it myself. I called several seamstresses and no one showed any interest in creating a caddie uniform, due to the effort and complexity.

The next step was to reach out to a clothing manufacturer and see if they could make it for me according to my son’s sizing specs. They told me that the minimum order would be 100 uniforms so I said “lets go for it” which was driven by a desperate need for that one uniform for my son’s Halloween costume.

After about 6 weeks of back and forth with the clothing manufacturer, 100 white caddie uniforms arrived on our doorstep. I kept one for my son, but suddenly my wife began questioning: “how are you going to unload the other 99 uniforms?”

I reached out to my whopping 600 friends on Instagram and asked if there was any interest to buy a uniform from me or to invest in my new business. Everyone told me that I was crazy and didn’t understand the concept or how the extra uniforms would even sell…

My wife suggested that we market to sell the uniforms for Halloween. The idea was that Dad and Mom could dress as the golfers and the kids would dress as the caddies. I was hoping there would be other people out there searching for kids caddie uniforms so I decided to throw it on Etsy with pictures of my son in his uniform. Sure enough, after roughly 4 months on Etsy, the extra 99 uniforms were sold and I actually had to sell my sons uniform because I was waiting for another batch of uniforms to arrive to keep up with the Halloween demand. We created an Instagram account for the caddie uniforms and it gained a lot of traction as parents and kids were dressing up for Halloween and posting pictures and tagging us.

After a few months of fulfilling orders, several of the popular mom bloggers posted their kids wearing our caddie uniforms for their golf themed hole-in-one fifirst birthday parties. The sales took off from there and we were then asked by many customers to start selling the adult caddie uniforms. That was a whole different animal but we were up for the challenge. We were able to find a clothing manufacturer that made adult coveralls and once they hit social media, they spread like wild fire! In 2022 we add a variety of hats, in 2023 we added dog caddie uniforms and we will continue to add a variety of different golf related apparel as the golf industry is trending in the right direction.

We have been continuing to grow at a rapid rate and we are grateful for all of our customers that have trusted in our products!

Justin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was a school teacher and administrator for 12 years. The caddie uniform business took off and I was able to leave teaching and do this full time. I spend most of my day on the sales and marketing side of the business. The goal for me is to develop new products and get them into new boutiques and pro shops around the country!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn being cheap. My customers want high quality products and that will cost me more money to meet my customers needs and desires. I also had to learn that its ok to rent an office building and hire a staff instead of trying to run the business out of my house by myself! All good things but it has allowed me to free up my time to explore new products and sell into new boutiques and golf shops.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The business started with kids caddie uniforms and we thought that this the only products that we would sell. Many customers kept asking for adult caddie uniforms, dog uniforms, bibs, hats, accessories, etc. I had to pivot and figure out how to sell these other products and bring them to life. It is amazing because we sell a variety of our products but the kids caddie uniform will always hold a special place in our heart!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://caddieuniform.com
• Instagram: caddieuniform
• Facebook: Kids and Adult Caddie Uniforms
• Linkedin: Justin Pillmore
• Twitter: caddieuniform